Television surrounds American lives. About 98.3% of the homes in the United States have television sets, with an average of 2.2 sets per household. Television is turned on more than seven hours per day in the average home, with each individual watching approximately four and a half hours per day. In a recent time-use survey sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau found that watching television was the leisure activity that occupied the most time. In fact, watching television accounted for about half of leisure time on average for both men and women.
The fast pace of modern life, however, requires people to maintain some contact with events in the world outside the home. For example, investors may desire to receive from brokerage accounts a notification when a stock reaches a certain price. As a further example, online auction bidders may wish to receive information regarding a current bid on a particular item. These messages or notifications are typically sent to the user's email account, pager or telephone. In addition to receiving specific notifications, a user may desire to receive general alerts from third parties, such as information about a sale at a particular store. Third parties, in turn, may desire to send alerts to a particular class of users.
A problem with receiving notifications via email, pager or telephone is that the user must have access to particular devices, e.g., a computer or telephone. It may not be convenient for the user to access these devices. Also, if users decide that they do not want to receive the preset alert because they do not care to receive the alert while watching television, the users must then disrupt their leisure time to access their accounts and alter the previously set alert settings.
Thus, there is a need for a system that may unobtrusively interrupt a user to alert the user of information and events. There is also a need for a general notification gateway to the user from a single service provider outside of the home to aggregate third party alerts for the users in the home.